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Canadian security investigators probe possible instigators of London terror suspects

Canadian national security investigators are probing intelligence about figures in London, Ont., who allegedly promoted extreme views of Islam and may have encouraged young Muslim men to go abroad, the Star has learned.

Canadian Aaron Yoon is being held in Nouakchott central prison in Mauritania, where he's serving a sentence for terrorism ties. (Laurent Prieur / Special to the Star)

Xris Katsiroubas, of Lonon, Ont., was killed in an attack by militants against a gas plant in Algeria in January. (Mark Spowart / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Ali Medlej, of Lonon, Ont., was killed in an attack by militants against a gas plant in Algeria in January. (Mark Spowart / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Called Project Scupper, the operation underway since 2011 in southern Ontario is focused on tracking individuals who have since left London—some believed to have travelled to the Toronto area, others who disappeared including three now tied to terrorist activity in northern Africa.

Project Scupper dovetails with, but is separate from, another investigation tagged as Project Spearmint that is focused more narrowly on how and why Canadians took part in a well-coordinated assault led by dangerous Al Qaeda offshoot on an Algerian gas plant in January.

Their friend, a third London, Ont., man named Aaron Yoon, is now jailed in Mauritania on terrorism conspiracy charges.

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And their fourth friend from London, Mujahid “Ryan” Enderi and his Libyan-born father Abdul are being sought by Canadian authorities who believe one or both may have valuable information that could shed light on the Algerian attack and the fertile ground for hard-line views that London appears to have provided.

Enderi, from a devout Muslim family based in London, was in Tripoli, Libya last month, working at his family’s s auto sales and repair shop, according to CTV. In London, his father Abdul shipped cars overseas.

Enderi said he had nothing to do with the Algeria attack, that he had lost contact with his three friends, and had only ideas, but no details, about what set Medlej and Katsiroubas on their path.

“I think I know, but I don’t know about, for example, how they got as far as they got, I know as much as you,” Enderi said, interviewed by CTV via Skype.

The Enderi family has refused interview requests. When Enderi’s name first became public in media reports last month, his younger brother Ubada told the Star he hadn’t spoken to his brother or father “for some time.”

Enderi attended the Muslim Youth Association of London with his friends Katsiroubas and Medlej. But Ahmed El-Turk who runs the Muslim centre and library for youths said he could not remember whether Yoon attended there.

El-Turk told the Star last month that Mujahid Enderi had been out of the country for two to three years, in Libya. It’s not completely clear when his father, Abdul, left for Africa but he, too, prayed at the association.

The association is open for prayer Friday nights for adults and throughout the week is used primarily to teach kids the ways of the faith.

El-Turk said Medlej and Katsiroubas attended his library a number of times in 2009-2010, and that he tried to guide them. “We tried to help them come to Islam, but not in the way they ended up.”

“We try to teach our kids here to live as good citizens and they rely on us to help them with our beliefs.”

By 2011, at least three of the four young men were well on another path, headed to Mauritania.

In the CTV interview last month, referring to the Algerian gas plant attack, Enderi said: “There’s nobody in the library that could have driven anybody to do something so horrible.”

Katsiroubas and Yoon also attended the London Mosque in the years leading up to leaving for Africa, though Medlej and Enderi did not, according to David Hassan, former chair of the board at the mosque located in the north London.

Katsiroubas, born to a middle-class Greek Orthodox family, and Yoon, a Korean-Canadian born to devout Catholic first-generation immigrant parents, stood out from the thousand or so Muslims who attend the mosque, said Hassan.

Hassan said Medlej — a Beirut-born Canadian — didn’t go to the London mosque, but Hassan was aware he had been planning to go to Mauritania for some time, while Yoon appeared to leave London abruptly.

Medlej, Katsiroubas and Yoon travelled in spring 2011 to Morocco and on to Mauritania together, where the jihadist influences of Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb have made inroads. All three were arrested, Yoon later than the other two, sources say, but Medlej and Katsiroubas were released.

Yoon told his family he was there to study Arabic and the Qur’an, but did not tell them of his arrest nor of his conviction in July 2012. Though he has since said he is innocent, he refused offers of help from Amnesty International and was sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to join a terrorist group to commit unspecified terrorist acts.

As details of his friends’ actions in Algeria emerge, Yoon is suddenly looking at 10 years in jail. Mauritanian prosecutors have gone back to court seeking a tougher sentence although they did not publicly tie Yoon to the Algerian case.

The RCMP again Thursday declined any comment on an investigation that is ongoing.

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